The arrow flies a simple course;
Unable to reverse its flight,
Or turn away from where it’s aimed
Through gleaming day or hazy night.
It travels fast along our way
Exhorting us to hold the pace
Revealing what we need to do,
Imposing its unbending fate.
Can you hear it whistling by?
Graceful with its feathered shaft,
Seeking victims as it flies,
Towards a place of dying pasts.
Past decaying stumps and limbs,
Where victims crawl on bended knees
Toward the fringes of their lives,
Searching for safe symmetries.
To only sit is certain death;
But death is certain anyway.
Does it pay to race the wind
To some unknown infinity?
And yet the paradox, my friend,
Is life and death are mirrored selves
Of shadows which we cast away
On every journey to its end.
Take the one and find the other
Sitting down or lurking by -
A symbiosis, if you will,
Of nothingness and human cry.
Is it a game? I see no chance.
If no chance, why play at all?
Perhaps because we all are fools,
Perhaps to hear another call
Our hidden selves in ways of love,
So even as we meet our fate,
We should know that life was worth
The pain we had to tolerate.
When in the end the arrow falls
And time will lose its tyranny,
There’s little more that we can choose
Except stay close to those we knew;
For what we did and how we loved
Will be reborn in memory.
- Finding the Light of G‑d, pages 106 - 107